Prevention and Community: COVID 19 lessons from London and Melbourne
These days London and other cities are struggling with a variant of the corona virus. It is good to be reminded of another epidemic which ravaged London in 1854 -- cholera. On the night of August 31, 56 people died of cholera, 143 followed the night of September 1, and 116 the following night. Medical personnel had been treating patients afflicted by the disease, but no amount of caring for each sick patient did anything to stop the epidemic. John Snow, a physician, began a systematic investigation of the water quality consumed by the patients. A few years earlier Snow had published a pamphlet postulating that cholera was a water-born disease. His theories, which were politely ignored at a few medical conferences, were proven beyond doubt in 1854.
His investigation led him to conclude that the Broad Street pump was the main source of cholera. Most people who drank from it became ill and died soon after. (Parenthetically, Snow nearly gave up his theory when he realized that about 70 workers in the brewery next to the pump were unaffected by the poor quality of the water. It turns out that workers in the brewery didn’t trust the water and drank only beer!). Snow ordered officials to remove the handle on September 7, 1854, stopping a major epidemic.
Snow didn’t know how to save people one at a time. Instead, he searched for the root cause. He understood that such massive outbreak of disease had to be related to an environmental problem and not to an individual problem. By removing the handle from the Broad Street pump, he was able to prevent hundreds if not thousands of deaths.
Snow’s story reminds us that no mass disorder, afflicting human kind, has ever been eliminated, or brought under control, by treating the affected individual. The best cure is prevention, but when prevention is not possible. we must invoke communitarian approaches such as protecting one another, wearing masks, and maintaining physical distance. This is how Melbourne, Australia, our second home, beat the virus. By invoking a sense of community and reciprocity, the city succeeded in almost eliminating the virus completely. It has now been over two months months with a handful of cases. For 57 days there were zero. Now in the new year there are a few new instances, but by all means they remain extremely low. In the last seven days there have been nine cases. By embracing a proactive, communitarian approach of mutual responsibility, the city was able to gain control of the pandemic.
The two cases, London and Melbourne, in two different eras, are object lessons in prevention and communitarian responses to global crises. We must do what we can to prevent another pandemic in the future, and we must do what we can to harness the will of the people to engage in reciprocal caring. Bogus appeals to personal freedom do nothing to build the trust required to truly tackle this calamity together.
Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky is an award-winning academic and author. He is also a coach, consultant and a researcher. His latest book, co-authored with his wife, Dr. Ora Prilleltensky, is How People Matter: Why it Affects Health, Happiness, Love, Work, and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Press here to pre-order.